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RICHEs quotes
Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance.
A great estate is a great disadvantage to those who do not know how to use it, for nothing is more common than to see wealthy persons live scandalously and miserably; riches do them no service in order to virtue and happiness; it is precept and principle, not an estate, that makes a man good for something.
There are two things needed in these days; first, for rich men to find out how poor men live; and second, for poor men to know how rich men work.
I cannot call riches by a better name than the "baggage" of virtue; the Roman word is better, "impediment." For as the baggage is to an army, so are riches to virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, and yet it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use, except in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.
Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them who despair of them; and none are worse than they when riches come to them.
Be not penny-wise; riches have wings; sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.
Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use.
Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
A fortune is usually the greatest of misfortunes to children. It takes the muscles out of the limbs, the brain out of the head, and virtue out of the heart. In this world, it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger.—It is the heart that makes a man rich.—He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Some of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected from those that know how to take wealth, with all its temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is hard to be a saint standing in a golden niche.
Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world than out of a dream.
An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
The use we make of our fortune determines as to its sufficiency.—A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.
My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.
He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable.
He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income.
As riches and favor forsake a man we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
Misery assails riches, as lightning does the highest towers; or as a tree that is heavy laden with fruit breaks its own boughs, so do riches destroy the virtue of their possessor.
Public sentiment will come to be, that the man who dies rich dies disgraced.
Riches should be admitted into our houses, but not into our hearts; we may take them into our possession, but not into our affections.
The greatest and the most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least,—the privilege of making others happy.
Agur said, "Give me neither poverty nor riches"; and this will ever be the prayer of the wise. Our incomes should be like our shoes: if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip. But wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants more. True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
A man who succeeds to his father's reputation must be greater than him, to be considered as great; but he that succeeds to his father's riches, will have to encounter no such deduction. The popular opinion adds to our means, but diminishes our merits; and it is not an unsafe rule to believe less than you hear with respect to a man's fortune, and more than you hear with respect to his fame.
If the search for riches were sure to be successful, though I should become a groom with a whip in my hand to get them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow after that which I love.
Man was born to be rich, or grows rich by the use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor.
Riches, though they may reward virtue, cannot cause it.—He is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one.
Riches without charity are nothing worth. They are a blessing only to him who makes them a blessing to others.
The sons of the rich, the educated darlings of wealthy families, are nowhere.—All their gifts were only so many fatal temptations, and they themselves are forgotten, like bad copies of good pictures.
The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell.
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
Riches amassed in haste will diminish, but those collected by little and little will multiply.
Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.
There is a burden of care in getting riches; fear in keeping them; temptation in using them; guilt in abusing them; sorrow in losing them; and a burden of account at last to be given concerning them.
If I have but enough for myself and family, I am steward only for myself and them; if I have more, I am but a steward of that abundance for others.
Riches, honors, and pleasures are the sweets which destroy the mind's appetite for heavenly food; poverty, disgrace, and pain are the bitters which restore it.
I take him to be the only rich man that lives upon what he has, owes nothing, and is contented; for there is no determinate sum of money, nor quantity of estate that can denote a man rich, since no man is truly rich that has not so much as perfectly satiates his desire of having more; for the desire of more is want, and want is poverty.
Riches are valuable at all times and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire: nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honor and virtue, which, if not equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.
Riches exclude only one inconvenience, and that is poverty.
Every man is rich or poor, according to the proportion between his desires and enjoyments. Of riches as of everything else, the hope is more than the enjoyment. While we consider them as the means to be used at some future time for the attainment of felicity, ardor after them secures us from weariness of ourselves; but no sooner do we sit down to enjoy our acquisitions than we find them insufficient to fill up the vacuities of life.
One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God's Word, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health; or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding, skill, wisdom! Yet men toil for them day and night, and take no rest. Therefore God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom he gives nothing else.
To have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without ispower.
The rich are the real outcasts of society, and special missions should be organized for them.
Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion everyone has of them; and riches, like glory or health, have no more beauty or pleasure, than their possessor is pleased to lend them.
A rich man, of cultivated tastes, with every right to gratify them, knowing enough of sorrow to humble his heart toward God, and soften it toward his neighbor—gifted with not only the power but will to do good, and having lived long enough to reap the fruits of an honorable youth in a calm old age—such a man, in spite of his riches, is not unlikely to enter the kingdom of heaven.
There is no less merit in keeping what we have got, than in first acquiring it. Chance has something to do with the one, while the other will always be the effect of skill.
"If I were rich," says one, "I would—" Illusion!—We often hold firmer to the last crown we have amassed than to the first which we gained.
Wouldst thou multiply thy riches?—diminish them wisely.—Or wouldst thou make thine estate entire?—divide it charitably.—Seeds that are scattered increase, but hoarded up they perish.
We see how much a man has, and therefore we envy him; did we see how little he enjoys, we should rather pity him.
We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mine than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.
If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.
He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain a very poor creature, for riches are no proof of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glowworm's light reveals the grub.
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
Satiety comes of riches, and contumaciousness of satiety.
If thou art rich, then show the greatness of thy fortune; or what is better, the greatness of thy soul, in the meekness of thy conversation; condescend to men of low estate, support the distressed, and patronize the neglected. Be great.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Worldly riches are like nuts; many clothes are torn in getting them, many a tooth broke in cracking them, but never a belly filled with eating them.
I have a rich neighbor that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, more money, that he may still get more. He considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; for it was wisely said that “there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them."
To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good in themselves, and capable of a good use. But to overvalue riches, to give them a place in the heart which God did not design them to fill, this is covetousness.
The larger the income, the harder it is to live within it.
Much learning shows how little mortals know; much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
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